Some travellers have extended similar remarks to the higher classes of the female sex, but unquestionably with more spleen than truth.
I had the honour of being acquainted with many Dutch ladies of respectability, and found them to be very neat in their persons, but my first remark too powerfully applies to the lower orders of the sex: they have no leisure to attend to themselves: to them, with a little transposition of the sentiment, may be applied the facetious lines that described a once celebrated opposition financier.
“It is said that his thoughts have been so long directed
To the national debt that his own are neglected.”
I remember while at Amsterdam a servant was very angry because I would not suffer her to wash my bedroom every day. It might be supposed that in a climate which must be naturally very humid, the natives would prefer having dry rooms as long as possible.
Upon some of the canals I saw Rhine boats of extraordinary dimensions; they were principally laden with hardware, and their owners and families resided wholly on board, in a suite of cabins, generally raised upon the deck, which, in point of commodious arrangement, of neatness and comfort, cannot easily be surpassed on shore. Upon the fore and aft part of the deck their ware is exposed to sale, and below are prodigious depots of the same articles. These vessels are frequently six months in their voyage up and down the Rhine, in consequence of their stopping at those cities or towns situated on its banks, where the owners are likely to have a market for their merchandize.
The reader will be surprised to hear that in several shops I saw many prints of our illustrious Nelson, in which the artist, in order to prevent the beholder from doubting that he had lost the sight of one eye in the service of his country, had the optic completely removed from its socket, and left a large frightful hole, for the purpose of illustrating this part of his heroic history.
At an excellent table d’hote, at the Mareschal de Turenne, I had the happiness of meeting several of my countrymen, who were returning to England after a long and most unjust detention at Verdun; from them I learned that specie was abundant in France, and that Napoleon scarcely admitted any paper to be in circulation; that the roads were no longer farmed, but by the aid of a small additional duty on salt, were put into the finest condition, and that no toll whatever was taken in any part of the empire. They said, that in point of restriction, they were not rigidly treated, but that there were no bounds to the rapacity of those appointed to look after them, particular of the gens d’armes.
The collections of paintings in Rotterdam are not numerous, but very select: perhaps no people upon the face of the earth ever displayed a more inveterate and immoveable attachment to every thing of native growth than the Dutch, except the Chinese, who consider improvement as penal innovation, and who confined a native in irons for life, because he ventured to make a boat upon a new construction, by which it sailed faster than any other.
This immoveable adhesion to old customs in the Dutch, is the more singular, as from their commercial character, they have been in constant intercourse with the natives of every quarter of the globe, the various produces of which they have brought into their own canals, but not for adoption, imitation, or, generally speaking, for consumption, but solely for profitable re-sale.